Realism and a Christian Perspective on Economics

This paper assesses recent neoclassical and radical contributions to the analysis of unemployment as a labour disciplinary device, in particular, those of Shapiro & Stiglitz and Bowles & Gintis. These authors share a common set of premises, notably on the conception of the effort decision, that present severe obstacles to the understanding of productivity constraints on full employment. The models of Shapiro & Stiglitz and Bowles & Gintis identify a specific 'asymptote problem' in which the achievement of full employment immediately triggers infinite (and hence unsustainable) wage increases. The premise that workers find work subjectively costly to perform effectively rules out the possibility for full employment. But this view fails to take into account the actual constitution of work motives. To the extent that work effort may be induced independently of dismissal threats, high work intensity may in fact be undermined by high unemployment. By taking work avoidance as given, the labour extraction literature forecloses consideration of the possibilities offered by alternative work organisation for removing unemployment as a worker disciplinary device.     

Organizational performance in hierarchies and communities of practice

In an earlier article we studied the Communities of Practice and their conditions of emergence using an Agent based model with a set of agents facing a continuous flow of problems. We now center our analysis on the performance of this organizational structure compared to a two-level hierarchical delegation structure. Our results show the crucial role played by the communication and the specialisation of agents; especially that community structures are efficient for competence building and learning in the long term. This paper backs the claim made by (Bowles, S., Gintis, H., 2002. Social capital and community governance. The Economic Journal 112, 419–437.) that hierarchy and communities are complementary modes of governance.     

Active and Passive Trading Relations

Anonymous competitive markets are often contrasted with relational exchange. Much actual trade falls between the two: trading is not anonymous, for the participants know each other, but they have only a weak bond. The current article examines this middle ground and discusses the institutions behind relational trading. It distinguishes active relations, as envisaged by the relational exchange literature, from passive ones associated with brand loyalty and relationship marketing. What we describe as a market in everyday language is seldom anonymous and includes diverse seller-buyer links that merit closer attention from economists.     

The market as a social space: On the meaningful extraeconomic conversations that can occur in markets

Prominent economic sociologist Richard Swedberg has argued that economists have failed to develop a theory of the market that recognizes it as a “social phenomenon in its own right.” While this may be true of mainstream economics, the Austrian school’s theory of the market is much richer than the standard view. For Austrians, the market has always been a central concern. And Austrians have always argued that the market is a social structure where both exchange and competition occurs. Still, Austrians give little more than scant attention to the noneconomic sociality that occurs in markets. The market, however, is both a conversation and an arena where meaningful conversations can occur. This paper is an effort to focus attention on the market as a social space where social activity (beyond competition and exchange) takes place and where noneconomic relationships and economic relationships develop.     

The real exchange rate and the black market exchange rate in developing countries

This article tests for the validity of the Purchasing power parity (PPP) theory using both the black market and the official exchange rates for panels with cross sectional dependency. The test is conducted using a newly developed, nonlinear IV panel unit root test that properly handles cross-sectional dependency for thirty-seven developing countries. We find that the null of joint unit root hypothesis is rejected for the whole panel, using the black market exchange rate, and for sub-panels of African and high inflation countries, using either exchange rate. The black market-based real exchange rates are, therefore, shown to provide stronger evidence for the purchasing power parity theory than do the official rates. This finding is consistent with the observation that black market exchange rates better represent market forces and thus are more relevant when testing for the validity of the PPP theory in developing countries.     

论市场经济与个人经济权利的进步

市场经济是推动个人经济权利进步的重要动力。市场经济之所以能够推动个人经济权利的进步，是因为市场经济与个人经济权利之间存在着密不可分的联系。市场经济的分工与交换、独立的主体利益和自由选择三个特征从不同的方面推动着个人经济权利的进步。     

Parity reversion persistence in real exchange rates: middle income country case

This article investigates purchasing power parity (PPP) in the specific context of middle income countries. To circumvent the low power of traditional stationarity tests (Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron tests), it performs variance ratio and fractional integration tests in addition to Perron's test that accounts for potential structural changes in real exchange rate processes. Beyond estimating half-life shocks to PPP, this article attempts to explain these estimates using a set of country specific variables as suggested by economic theory. The evidence suggests that reversion to parity tends to be faster in high inflation countries and that productivity improvement leads to a higher level of persistence. Openness to trade tends to reduce the extent of deviations from parity but this result does not appear to be statistically robust. Evidence shows also that deviations are less persistent under a fixed exchange rate regime and under unrestricted capital mobility.     

Financial Trilemma in China and a Comparative Analysis with India

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneously maintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subject to the constraints imposed by the trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In this paper we review and contrast the trilemma policy choices and trade‐offs faced by the two key drivers of global economic growth: China and India. China's trilemma configurations are unique relative to other emerging markets in terms of the predominance of exchange rate stability, and in the failure of the trilemma regression to capture a consistently significant role for financial integration. In contrast, the trilemma configurations of India are in line with choices made by other emerging countries. Over time, India, like other emerging economies, has converged towards a middle ground among the three policy objectives, and has achieved comparable levels of exchange rate stability and financial integration buffered by sizeable international reserves.     

汇率-资本流动性的制度安排和财政-货币政策的有效性研究

笔者通过拓广的蒙代尔-弗莱明模型,并突破了传统的"三元冲突"汇率制度安排理论的研究路径,考虑引入资本流动性相对强度系数的概念,又在固定汇率制下引入"冲销"干预政策因素,提出了一个在固定和浮动汇率及不同资本流动性制度安排下财政-货币政策有效性指数曲线的新假说,对汇率-资本流动性制度安排对于宏观经济政策(财政-货币政策)综合有效性的影响问题做了一些较为深入的探讨.笔者认为,我国作为一个经济大国应尽可能地拥有宏观经济政策的自主权,考虑到我国当前金融市场体系尚不够完善,货币政策传导机制还存在严重障碍,所以在近期财政政策的权重应大于货币政策,从而在我国汇率制度改革过程中,为保留宏观经济政策的自主权,在加快放宽人民币汇率弹性的同时必须加强相应的资本管制.     

Which norms are strong reciprocators supposed to enforce? Not all norms are psychologically the same

Gintis’ (2000) analysis of strong reciprocity in terms of group survival leads to the conclusion that any norm, be it cooperative or prudential, that potentially enhances group survival will be enforced by a significant subset of individuals (strong reciprocators) who enforce norms even at their own individual expense. Gintis’ assumption that the human mind is an initially structureless receptacle for cultural norms further reinforces this view. In contrast, I argue that humans possess a natural domain-specific competence for social cooperation that is distinct from our prudential competence in dealing with potential hazards. I review a range of psychological evidence including multidimensional scaling studies, studies of emotional reactions, reasoning, functional MRI and judgments about punishment suggesting that not all norms are psychologically equivalent, with only a subset of norm violations eliciting punitive sentiments.     

经济系统引力论——市场·道德·政治结构体系的经济均衡规范场理论研究论纲

本文秉承瓦尔拉斯的“普遍的相互依赖性”研究原则,运用思想实验的理论研究方法,拟订一个探索性研究纲领,研究一种比亚当·斯密那只“看不见的手”更为普遍的经济秩序：看不见的手（市场力量）＋看得见的左手（道德力量）＋看得见的右手（政治力量）,试图构造一种引力场方程,表述经济世界中市场力量、精神世界中道德力量、社会结构中政治力量构成的三极统一体的相互作用。首先,通过引入Smale的均衡流形概念统一处理市场均衡、人性均衡、社会均衡同时达成的整体的、统一的均衡状态;然后,建立一种正义空间概念范畴,而正义空间恰为一种引力空间,且是商品空间（拓扑空间）的推广;再运用Debreu的超额需求函数法,建构了一种市场·道德·政治三极世界四维空间的经济均衡规范场方程;最后,提出广义一般经济均衡机制统一处理“看不见的手”与“看得见的双手”之间的耦合问题,通过定义“看不见的手”为基本相互作用力,“看得见的右手”为强相互作用力,“看得见的左手”为弱相互作用力,这就形成了一种新的秩序。对这种秩序下的资源配置机制的数学表达式我们称其为四维流形的几何与拓扑．太文给出了i专一糖槌的一种数学证明．     

A Behavioral Analysis of Technological Change in the Computer Industry, 1930–1950

This article presents a binary economic critique of Milton Friedman's thesis that a competitive, free market, private enterprise, capitalist system is an essential condition for freedom. After identifying deficiencies in Friedman's understanding of private property and economics, this article explains how a market economy based on Friedman's flawed understanding concentrates economic power in a plutocracy, perpetuates chronic underemployment of labor and capital, and suppresses the freedom of most people. It advances a "binary economic approach" to create a more productive and democratic market system characterized by greater, more sustainable, and more widely-distributed prosperity, economic power, and individual freedom than prevails in any existing capitalist economy.     

电力市场复杂特性及其演化规律的实证研究

复杂系统研究的基本问题是,大量个体(包括有生命和无生命的)所组成的复杂系统,在没有中心控制、非完全信息、仅仅存在局域相互作用的条件下,如何通过个体之间的非线性相互作用,在宏观层次上涌现出一定的有序结构和功能。本文基于复杂系统理论,对电力市场的复杂特性及其演化规律进行了分析,并以美国加州电力市场和PJM电力市场为例进行了实证分析。研究结果表明:电力市场作为一种经济系统,是一个包括多因素、多层次,涉及多环节的复杂系统,也因此具有了复杂系统的一切特征和性质。美国加州电力市场的电价分布具有自相似性,反映出竞争性电力市场具有复杂分形结构,即具有了复杂系统的涌现性特征;美国PJM电力市场的电价服从幂律分布,验证了竞争性电力市场自组织临界性的演化规律。本文结论为电力市场研究提供了新的思路和角度。     

地方保护的经济学分析

在经济越来越趋于全球化的今天，我国国内却地方保护盛行。地方保护给我国不可避免地带来了诸多问题，它使全国统一的大市场难以建立、公平竞争的市场环境难以形成以及资源难以在全国范围内最优化配置。当前．我国正在进行大规模经济秩序整顿及经济发展环境治理，其中主要问题就是消除影响社会整体福利的地方保护主义。运用经济学的静态分析法和博弈论对地方保护主义的成因及影响展开分析，在此基础上提出解决方案。     

Export pricing and exchange rate expectations under uncertainty

This paper contributes to the literature on firms’ export pricing by assessing whether and to what extent firms take into account the expected future evolution of the exchange rates while setting their prices. Using French micro-level trade data, our empirical analysis reveals that by adjusting their export prices, firms partly absorb information about future exchange rate variations. The extent to which individual exporters absorb future exchange rate fluctuations is found to depend on their market power, in accordance with theoretical dynamic demand-side models encompassing mechanisms creating an inter-temporal relationship between current market shares and future profits. The analysis also shows that the strength of such expectation-related mechanism is considerably reduced with greater future exchange rate uncertainty, in line with an interpretation of pricing-to-market as an investment decision under uncertainty. In a comparative perspective our results are shown to drive asymmetric responses across destinations of aggregate bilateral export flows to expected exchange rate movements.     

Bureaucrats and Babies: Government Regulation of the Supply of Genetic Material*

One might object to the sale of genetic material on the ground that it constitutes a trade in human beings. We argue that such exchange does not constitute a morally significant departure from current practice concerning the sale of other bodily property. Some utilitarians have argued that there is no justification for suppliers of genetic material receiving the competitive market-clearing price for their product. They maintain that utilitarian objectives would be better advanced by distributing genetic material through a government board. We contend that competitive market exchange of genetic material is preferable both because it does more to further individual liberty and because it is more efficient.     

货币契约、金融功能与经济发展

本文从交换的角度出发,认为货币是一种为了节约交易费用而设计的载有对社会资源支配权的契约。契约的目的是保障货币作为一种有效率的交换媒介,从而降低交易成本。从契约这一视角理解货币可以发现金融系统有三项重要功能:组织社会资源进行生产、调节消费与投资的比例和风险管理。笔者基于金融系统对消费投资比例的调节功能,通过构建模型说明,发展中国家可以通过完善市场机制和金融系统功能,借助市场的力量实现投资与消费的最优比例,从而使经济得到最优的发展。     

Money and the ‘Level Playing Field’: The Epistemic Problem of European Financial Market Integration

ABSTRACT

Financial market integration processes in the European Union (EU) are characterised by an epistemic problem of economic theory. This problem encompasses what ‘the market’ is, how it is to be ‘integrated’, and the nature and role of ‘money’ as infrastructure of the fully integrated market. The EU’s legal framework has imported this epistemic problem along with the competitive conception of the market as described in economic theory – as a ‘level playing field’ for private exchange, under free, fair and ideally unrestrained competition. It manifests itself in European financial market integration processes, as exemplified in the article, via two otherwise disconnected areas of European Central Bank (ECB) activity: (a) the provision of central bank credit for the purpose of financial transaction settlement in the Eurozone; and (b) the conduct of ordinary monetary policy in the Eurozone. While the problem can be stabilised through legal, technical and other means, it remains latent, and may manifest itself again in unexpected ways, as happened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Thus, contrary to ideologies that are widely understood as more or less coherent systems of doctrines, epistemic problems are characterised by specific tensions, contradictions and conceptual uncertainties.